Cinnamon Linen
by Alicorn
Summary: A time machine, a cure from pimples, and a run in with Mojo sends three puffs searching for survival...and home.
1. 0: In Which

Author's Notes:

_This story is the product of many stories all melted together with my sickness. Some have been done a million times, but as far as I know not in PPG fandom quite this way (I'm still new)._

_Unlike any other ideas I have found with some of the same seeds of story, Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup are still themselves. Mojo is Mojo and Him is my IC AU but still, I think, Him._

_History facts/locations/religion/String theory in the world of Townsville=/= those of our world perfectly and are not met to here. After all, the show did have cavemen that looked like they could be neighbors with the Flintstones. And said 'ug'. Yeah._

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Cinnamon Linen

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_Prologue_

The smell of cinnamon was nearly intoxicating.

It hung heavy on the wind, brushing the raffia palm leaves aside from faded blue sky.

It had surprised Bubbles at first, the scent flares being Buttercup's idea.

But who would know spice better?

White sand swifted under her feet as a burst from Buttercup's scented fire came again.

Blossom wiped her tanned arm across her brow, arcing it in a line westward.

"Over there! She really must have found something!"

Bubbles nodded, looking up from the drawn line of her driftwood walking stick, dotted for the last mile with circular spirals.

"Or someone. Oh, I hope..."

Blossom sighed, shaking her head and making the long beaded sections of hair rattle.

"It's fine to hope but the reality is most likely..Oh my..."

The teens last word died into silence.

Bubbles ran into her side with a gasp, quickly looking away.

He's...hurt bad." Came the low words.

Buttercup's long hair that stubbornly remembered it's even longer edges trailed over the claw marks across Mojo Jojo's face.

Tattered lengths of his blue tunic lay against dusty fur, once black turned a mud washed grey.

Bubbles knelt, reaching a trembling hand as Buttercup turned his body away from the signal fire.

The pink and bloody section of what had once been the villain's throat made Bubbles turn away again, closing her eyes a bit too tight.

"Other chimps must have jumped him." Buttercup said, her eyes near leaving the wound. "He's a little guy, without powers..."

"We'll need water. I'll get it!" Blossom offered, her prints already lining the muddy ground.

"..and I'll, I'll..Blossom." Bubbles soft voice behind a makeshift leaf mask rang loud as a shout."The infection. I don't think he'll... be able to talk again."

Bubbles winched as the sound of wind through feathers rose to an angry beat, fading into the afternoon sun.

_"I wish we were home."_


	2. 1:  Time is Lost And Found

**Chapter I**

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Science fair projects always seemed so far away.

Buttercup decided with an extra angry kick of her soccer ball that if there was anything worth studying it had to be the sneaky traditions of 8th grade teachers.

By the time she had drifted up and down the stairs twice, head butting the ball and landing every 2nd step for good measure,

she was sure the scientific method was just code for 'things you'll never use again unless you become a boring teacher.'

If only her sisters were as easy to understand.

"Buuttercuuup! What are you doing?"

Bubbles familiar whine rose to an ear bleed pitch.

"You're suppose to be helping!"

Her blue streak jetted through a pile of paper mache and glue, coming to a stop in the kitchen to throw the whole mess away.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Buttercup continued kicking her ball, not even pausing to pop in two fresh pieces of gum and chew them smugly.

"It looks like you're fooling around with that idiotic ball while my-I mean, our academic futures are on the line, that's what!"

Blossom snapped, her face red with rage as she looked up from a pile of books perfectly in sync with the snap of a sisterly gum bubble.

"So? I'm helping. I'm testing... physics! Yeah!"

Blossom growled.

"Well your 'physics' isn't going to help us come up with A+ science project for the fair in less than half an hour. I won't go to a state college! I won't-!"

Bubbles suddenly flew across the room with a smile, de-railing a world famous Blossom self pitying fit.

"Easy Blossom, don't worry, don't worry! See?"

The overpowering stench from a sightly green Tupperware cube Bubbles whipped from behind her back sent her sisters falling over in a bid for air.

"You can study the Professor's meatloaf!"

Blossom and Buttercup flew upward and out through the front window, gasping and chocking.

"Nobody's that desperate." Blossom groaned.

"What's wrong?" Bubbles asked, flying up to meet them.

Buttercup grimaced, throwing the plastic abomination quickly away as Blossom ice breathed it toward the safe, odorless infinity of space.

Blossom patted her shoulder.

"Thank you Bubbles, but it's going to take more than unholy culinary skills unexplored by science to get an A this time. We need something fresh, something like..."

Buttercup looked matter-of-fact-ly at the clock as they flew back inside, melting the glass back together with heat vision behind them.

"This is the last time I ever pick you guys as my lab partners. I'm going to get an F even with a smarty pants and the queen of teacher's pet land for sisters. I give up!'

Buttercup sighed as Blossom trailed after her, pink eyes wide and arms waving in self defense against the imaginary grip of an incoming less than perfect grade.

"I would have had the report done all by myself, but but, I have Latin and volleyball and chess club and there was that flesh eating fungus Fuzzy let loose on the city last Wednesday."

"Yeah, yeah," Buttercup said, piping into a prefect imitation of Blossom's voice. "_If only I had more time, oh so few hours in a day, whatever can perfect me do?_"

Blossom stopped where her fist now hung above a glass display case that looked not totally legal and seemed to contain the Dead Sea Scrolls, on their living room rug.

"_Time_! That's it! Buttercup, you're a genius!"

Bubbles replaced a black mask over her flat nose and took back the encased scrolls.

"What about time?"

She streaked away, back with surprisingly evidence free arms a normal pause length later.

"What about time can help us? We don't have much of it left.."

"Exactly!" Blossom nodded. "Remember the Professor's real time machine? We can use that!"

Three streaks of colored light zipped down into the basement, clicking on the light as they went, and were soon energy deep in scientific knickknacks.

"Oo! You mean to travel in time to tell ourselves to do our _homework_?"

Bubbles asked, surfacing with the satellite like time-space bender of the machine on her head like a hat.

"No, kittens for brains, we're obliviously going to travel back and get a real live _dinosaur_." Buttercup surfaced, lifting a corner of the machines elevator size middle like it was a roll of paper towels. "It's only logical."

"You're both wrong!" Blossom flew from the heap, carrying the base of the machine where it sparked and sizzled like a freshly uprooted weed.

"The only logical thing to do is use the time machine as our project. And when they ask for proof, we just set it to a distant lightly populated time period and recover rock samples, which can be dated with-"

Buttercup groaned as they rocketed up the stairs and out of the house, halfway across Townsville before Blossom caught up.

"Leave it to you to make amazing so _boring_."

Bubbles adjusted her receiver like hat running a fingerless hand over a pigtail.

"I was going to tell past me not to buy this shampoo, it makes my hair oily."

"I don't think villains care, Bubbles."

"_I dooo.._"

The air around the three swirled, clouds twisting into the disembodied unmistakable head of Him...that was completely ignored, leaving the prince of darkness craning his invisible neck.

"Fine, don't be my BFFs today! I'm soooo this close to **_un-friending you on Facebook_**!"

Him's fading sob made Buttercup and Blossom turn where they flew, glaring in unison at Bubbles.

"Why are you looking at me that way?"

Blossom shook her head.

"Anyway, we should have this A in the bag, thanks to my quick thinking. As long as we don't run into- Mojo Jojo!"

Today's Robojojo loomed large , decked out with five arms: one for slicing, one for dicing, and three more Buttercup knew from experience were more than ready to make Powerpuff julien fries.

"Make it fast Mojo Jojo!" They zoomed ahead, halfway into punching formation when a peaceful giant hand went up.

"Hey, what gives?" Buttercup sputtered.

"Some of us have places we need to be you know!" Bubbles agreed.

"Please, please girls. You have Mojo in the wrong light. I do not wish to battle you today, no no no."

The chimp gestured, the menace-ly evil robot coping his every move.

"Where as any other day Mojo would be more than happy and that is to say get much enjoyment out of seeing you cut up blown up and otherwise bloodied today I am not going to do so for-"

"Get to the point already!" Buttercup huffed.

Mojo blinked.

"Well! There is not any need to be rude! It just so happens that I enjoy various scientific pursuits and that loathsome yet somehow mesmerizing tradition of a baking soda and vinegar volcano.

As such, I, Mojo Jojo, am also on my way to your school's science fair- and perhaps to buy a soda afterward to provide refreshment as-"

"Great!" Blossom yelled, speeding off with her machine section.

"See you there!" Buttercup added.

"Oo, oo, can we get sodas to?" Bubbles asked, speeding to join them on the horizon.

A single crumpled newspaper blew across giant metallic boots.

_"Why does no one ever stay to listen to Mojo?"_

The robot sadly sat with a dry "thud", head propped up in its monumental hands.


	3. 1: Cardboard is War

The cafeteria, normally home to many a wayward fish-stick was now heavy with talk of grades and speeches memorized two weeks ago in front of bathroom mirrors.

Just how Blossom normally liked it.

But now, standing in a nearby corner as Buttercup's carpentry skills made all the crashing and dust of a small construction crew, a familiar itch ran up her leg.

She scratched the guilt with an uneasy ankle as it moved, laughing near her ear.

_You didn't make it, cheater._

Blossom silently willed the insight away as Buttercup smiled in front of their freshly assembled table.

Rows away, Princess' table collapsed, mysteriously missing a leg, and half of her displays' flashy store bought cardboard.

"Welp, here it is, all done!" Bubbles waved from a spot on the floor, sticking up an armful of poster broads at nose level with Blossom with a speed that would have given anyone else a super-powered papercut.

"And here are all the charts! I made the quantum differential factor _purple_ to highlight the enhanced probability level's _yellow_ and..."

Blossom and Buttercup blinked.

"What? I'm a _visual_ learner! Sheesh!" Bubbles huffed, returning to her colored pencils.

Heavy footsteps of fashionable shoes, now plastered with ruined shreds of cardboard, accompanied a dramatic flick of red curly hair.

"Well, well, if it isn't the Powder-puffs! I didn't know they were still letting science experiments bring experiments to the fair this year."

Princess poked at the outside of the time machine with a sneer. "What you bring this time, your _spawn_?"


End file.
